Liver + Ginger Eggplant
- Mar 10
- 5 min read
Monday
Arthur woke up a bit before 7:00, so he basically slept in! Maybe it was because it had been a fairly late night for him the day before. Miklós fed him another ready-made baby food purée made of sweet potato & cauliflower while they waited for the boobs to become available, and apparently, Arthur ate it with gusto.
I took him to Lidl fairly early in the morning. There, the same shop attendant who had given us the stamps last time (she's there fairly regularly, and one of Arthur's biggest fans) cried out when she saw him. "Hi my friend!" she exclaimed, cooing as he smiled at her, and then whipping his stroller to show him off to her friend. It was pretty cute.
I've been a bit concerned about Arthur's iron intake ever since learning breast-fed babies start losing their stores at around 6 months. In the states, ready-made baby foods are typically fortified with iron, but not here, so I started looking into foods that are naturally high in iron. Liver is one of the highest, so I asked Jutka to cook some up for Arthur, because I figured she would have more experience with the stuff, and be less grossed out by it. So she cooked him some chicken livers in olive oil with borsikafű (summer savory), and we gave him a bit first on its own, and then mixed from some of the purée from this morning. And he seemed to really like it both ways! He's a proper Hungarian.
After lunch, Miklós and Jutka went to Den Bosch for another house viewing, one which Arthur and I again opted to stay home for, as I didn't want to put him or the rest of us through another car ride together. While they were gone, Arthur had some more kiwi to wash down his carnivorous lunch. He seemed more ambivalent about it this time; he didn't really grunt for more, but also didn't make any horrified faces while eating it; just kind of accepted it as it came. So...success?
He was in a really goofy mood for most of the afternoon; giggling as he peeked up at me over my arm, sucking on it and his fingers like crazy and smiling, shrieking and smiling for no apparent reason in his crib as he kicked his feet in the air...maybe he had a case of the baby giggles or something. It was pretty cute.
Miklós and Jutka didn't get home until fairly late, so I fed Arthur an extra snack before dinner to keep him going. It had been a while since he'd had peanut butter, so I gave him a bit of that, watered-down as always, and he seemed to like it quite a bit, though didn't grunt for more. And then at dinnertime, he had some more of his favorite: Weetabix breast milk porridge! Maybe he was really hungry at that point, but he demolished an entire biscuit mixed with maybe 70-80ml breast milk. So he wasn't really hungry after that, and didn't drink any of the formula we made for him (Mama had had wine with dinner).
So, on Monday, Arthur ate:
sweet potato
cauliflower
chicken liver (new food!)
kiwi
peanut butter
Weetabix
Tuesday
A 6:30 wakeup for Arthur. He polished off the rest of the sweet potato/cauliflower purée while waiting for his second breakfast. He seemed to be a bit constipated during his morning nursing session, something I had noticed in him yesterday as well. Maybe it's all the solids. Still, he managed to get a nice big poop out.
Jutka left in the early afternoon, after taking her grandson out for one last nice long walk. We were lucky that the weather was beautiful for the entirety of her visit! After she left, Arthur had an afternoon snack of a new baby food purée consisting of potato + broccoli + peas (he seemed a bit ambivalent about it), followed by a scrambled egg cooked in sesame oil and seasoned with garlic & turmeric powder (which he was also a bit less enthusiastic about than usual). I think he might still be having a bit of stomach issues, given his reaction to those two foods.
We didn't have a lot of success with his dinner feeding; he had barely slept at all by that point, and was really worked out. I gave him some more of the purée from that morning, but he was pretty miserable during most of the dinner, and while he ate some of it, spent a lot of the time screaming. When I brought him upstairs for a nursing session afterwards, he pretty much instantly fell asleep.
Arthur's Tuesday intake thus came to:
sweet potato
cauliflower
broccoli
potato (new food!)
peas (new food!)
egg
sesame oil
garlic powder
turmeric powder
On Monday, we had ready-made meals, since I wasn't sure whether Miklós and Jutka would be home for dinner or not. On Tuesday, however, I decided to try something new! Eggplant were on sale this week, so I decided to try out a recipe I'd been eying for a while; I love Asian eggplant stir-fries and this sticky ginger tofu eggplant dish sounded awesome. As usual, I modified it a bit, but it turned out really great! Here's how I made it:
Asian Ginger Eggplant and Tofu (serves 2)
Ingredients
325 extra-firm tofu
1 tbsp coconut flour
2 medium eggplants (mine were around 200g each once I cut off the tops)
4 medium green onions
1 tbsp olive oil
½ tbsp sesame oil
Sauce:
⅓ cup soy sauce
4 tbsp syrup/equivalent in other sweetener of choice
3 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp miso paste
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp fresh ginger, minced or grated (~3 inch piece)
MSG (optional, to taste)
Cooked rice, for serving
Instructions
Pat the tofu dry with paper towels to remove extra moisture, then cut into large rectangles.
Add the tofu to a pot of boiling salted water, and boil for 2 minutes.
Drain, then toss the tofu in coconut flour until evenly coated, and cook in the air fryer at 200 degrees Celsius for about 10 minutes, checking regularly. Set aside when it is brown and crispy.
Peel and mince the garlic and ginger. Slice the white and light green parts of the green onions into 1-inch pieces. Finely slice the dark green parts and set aside for garnish.
In a small bowl or mug, add the soy sauce, sweetener, rice vinegar, miso paste, garlic, and ginger. Microwave for about 30 seconds to make it easier to mix, then whisk together until it is smooth. Set aside.
Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise, then into ½-inch slices.
Heat both the olive and sesame oil in a large skillet or wok over medium heat.
Add the eggplant to the pan and cook over medium heat until brown, but not fully softened.
Once all eggplant is browned, add the white/light green onion pieces. Cook for 1 minute, stirring often.
Pour the sauce into the pan and stir to coat. Cook for 2–3 minutes to reduce slightly. Add the tofu and toss gently to coat. Cook another 2 minutes, until the sauce is thickened and the tofu is heated through.
Remove from heat, garnish with the dark green onion slices, and serve immediately over rice.
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